Language: Its Nature, Development and Origin

The same predilection for etymology, and a similar primitive kind of etymology, based entirely on a more or less accidental similarity of sound and easily satisfied with any fanciful connexion in sense, is found abundantly in Greek writers and in their Latin imitators. But to the speculative minds of Greek thinkers the problem that proved most attractive was the general and abstract one, Are words natural and necessary expressions of the notions underlying them, or are they merely arbitrary and conventional signs for notions that might have been equally well expressed by any other sounds? Endless discussions were carried on about this question, as we see particularly from Plato’s Kratylos, and no very definite result was arrived at, nor could any be expected so long as one language only formed the basis of the discussion—even in our own days, after a century of comparative philology, the question still remains an open one. In Greece, the two catchwords phúsei (by nature) and thései (by convention) for centuries divided philosophers and grammarians into two camps, while some, like Sokrates in Plato’s dialogue, though admitting that in language as actually existing there was no natural connexion between word and thing, still wished that an ideal language might be created in which words and things would be tied together in a perfectly rational way—thus paving the way for Bishop Wilkins and other modern constructors of philosophical languages.